Are Minnesota Sports Fans Happy With The Twins?

A new survey finds that most Minnesotans are happy with the ownership of their professional sports franchises.

I’m sure we’d all say we’d like to see a few more national championships, but overall, fans are pretty content… with everyone but the Twins.

A Minnesota Community Survey of over a thousand Minnesota sports fans found most of us have a “warm” opinion of our team’s ownership. If we know who owns the team (and that’s not a guarantee), we have a slightly positive opinion of the job they’re doing. Unless we’re talking about the Twins. Then, we get a little grumpy.

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In the survey, 20% of the respondents gave the Pohlad family, the majority owners of the Minnesota Twins, a positive rating, while 31% have an unfavorable rating. The other 49% “don’t know”. The Pohlads are the most unpopular owners in the state by far; the Wilf family, owners of the Minnesota Vikings, have the highest approval rate among the state’s teams at 41%, followed by Greg Liepold, the Wild owner, and the Timberwolves ownership team led by Alex Rodriguez.

Why does it matter? Hennepin County will consider extending its sales tax for Target Field maintenance in the near future. The team’s fans, already frustrated after a series of late-season trades last year, will be hesitant to support a tax for a team that doesn’t have much goodwill to spend.

In an interesting twist, the Twins don’t follow the more predictable trends of other teams either. With the other state’s teams and the national attitude in general, men are more likely to call themselves a “superfan” and are more positive about the ownership of the team than women. With the Twins, men have a more negative view of the ownership than women; it seems that a more intense following of the team leads to a larger dissatisfaction in the Twins case.

In short, the ball’s in the Pohlad’s court (or one of the nicest fields in Major League Baseball). Fans have spoken; we’ve done our part, now you do yours.